


give them hell, give them teeth like you taught me

by gracelessheartlines



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: "let's run away", Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, and then back together again, axgweek, except they keep running away from each other, the modern au is strong here, there's lots of angst in this one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-11
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2020-08-19 08:50:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20207023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gracelessheartlines/pseuds/gracelessheartlines
Summary: Arya and Gendry running away over the years.





	give them hell, give them teeth like you taught me

**2006.**

In the warmth of the June sun, Arya pulled out her favorite pair of cherry red sunglasses. They were cheap and plastic and the ends were gnawed as a memorial to summers past.

“Do you ever think about moving to Braavos? Somewhere endlessly sunny, where the leaves don’t fall and snow doesn’t pile up on the sidewalks.” She mentally tallied up the money in her bank account and decided a one-way ticket to Essos International Airport wasn’t worth the savings from two summers of odd jobs. Selling oysters, clams, and cockles were not her thing.

“I don’t think Braavos has seasons. I wouldn’t give up snowforts for sandcastles.” Gendry frowned and reconsidered his response. “Why Braavos?”

“I’ve lived in Winterfell all my life.” She shrugged. “I don’t know anyone in Braavos.” 

“I thought you loved winter?”

Arya did love winter, but she thought she loved a lot of things. The ice that clung to the ends of her hair, soft footprints pressed into the loose powder of fresh snow, a cold that worked its way into her bones and never let out.

She turned to face Gendry and rolled her eyes, her reaction obscured beneath the wide frames of her sunglasses. “Thought you hated it. Too warm-blooded for the North.”

“Not what I meant,” replied Gendry. “Wouldn’t you get bored?”

“If I wanted to do be bored, I would move to King’s Landing or something. Look at me now, eighteen and hungry for culture.” 

Arya settled back into her patio chair and pushed her sunglasses up to her forehead.

**2015.**

“You keep running in circles and I’m tired of it.” He sounded exhausted. Exhausted of her.

The geometry of it made sense to her once. A circle had three-hundred and sixty degrees no matter how you tried to slice it. If you turned and did a one-eighty, you ended up a completely opposite of who you were. Turn another one-eighty and you were right back where you started.

Arya was terrified of that part.

“I’m not running,” she said softly. She cleared her throat and pushed her body off the wall. “Running is overrated.”

“Then stay.” He wasn’t begging, but he wondered what would happen if he did. If he moved closer and put his arm out, if he made her a promise he knew he couldn’t keep.

She shook her head and held her hands up, an almost protective gesture. “It’s only fair if we both give up.” 

Gendry thought of all the years he had known Arya, stood on hallowed ground with her or laughed at stupid jokes or told her the truth when nobody else would.

The recess of first grade when their classmates made fun of her boyish, short-cropped haircut and she pushed him into the sandbox for trying to defend her. The summer after seventh grade when his jittery hands found hers during the funeral service, and they both knew his life would never be the same again. The afternoons she would perch herself on top of a toolbox and watch him work at the shop, the evenings he would wipe his hands clean of motor oil and engine grease and they would share an ice cream sandwich. The spring of senior year when they walked the stage in graduation gowns and the messy yolk of the world cracked open for them.

“That’s cheap. You and I both know it.” Gendry was a person of facts. The fact was that he was close, but he would never get close enough.

Gendry took a step forward. With her, it was always one step forward and then three steps back.

  
**2008.**

Hospital protocol said Gendry couldn’t visit until two days after she woke. Not unless he was family or next-of-kin, but he was—he was family, or whatever that meant to checkboxes on a medical form.

He bought her a stuffed wolf in a purple wizard hat and a pack of sour gummies from the hospital gift shop. The sour gummies were a gamble.

He wasn’t sure if she would be allowed to eat anything; he wasn’t sure of anything, really. All he knew was that he got a call late in the night that she was in the hospital and he had hardly slept in the days since.

“Hi,” he said carefully. He held up the pack of sour gummies as a peace offering.

Arya looked up and smiled weakly at him. “Hello.”

Gendry shuffled awkwardly in the doorway. Arya’s eyes looked straight at him, to the visitor’s chair at her bedside, and back to him. He couldn’t bring himself move.

He imagined her unraveled body in the hospital room days earlier amidst the doctors, the stitches and bandages and blood. He thought of her limbs, heaving and tangled, a marionette with its strings pulled too tight.

“What happened, Arya?” His voice was lower than usual. The words had to fight their way out of his throat.

Arya laughed, a soft twinkling noise that broke the monotony of the beeping monitors and buzzing lights overhead. “Do I really look that bad?”

Gendry’s face broke into a reluctant smile, and then sobered again. “I don’t know anything. I just know I don’t hear from you for two months and then I get a call from your sister that you’ve been in an accident and—and here I am.”

“Okay,” she replied slowly. “Thank you for coming.”

Arya meant to say more, meant to say how she really felt, but the truth was that she could no longer feel anything. She had been sedated, then put on pain killers, and now all she knew was numb. A stubborn numbness that held her heart in a vice-like grip, her body in paralysis.

Unsatisfied, Gendry crossed his arms and looked straight at her.

“Was it a mistake?” Gendry asked. The truth hung itself somewhere in the thick hospital air.

“Everything is a mistake with me, isn’t it?” Arya looked the same, in a hospital gown illuminated by pale yellow fluorescence, despite her pale complexion and spiderweb hair.

  
**2017.**

He sent her a fucking postcard from Highgarden.

It was a photo of a vineyard past its heyday, once fertile grounds for the finest Chardonnay turned destination wedding spot for sun-bleached sorority girls. The back of the postcard was blank save for a “xx. Gendry” scrawled in the bottom right corner. He could have at least sent her a nice bottle of wine with the postcard.

Gendry left her for sunshine in the car, for greener pastures and a glistening college diploma as many miles away as his beat-up Honda could take him. It was the only way he could get out, and he did.

They had talked about it when they were younger, leaving the world behind them with the money in their pockets and a half-formed plan between them. They could leave, and the thought of freedom was liberating. A frozen picture in a frame, a getaway car on a winding highway along the Kingsroad.

Arya wanted him to know that he ran first.

She was still drunk on the memory of him. She didn’t know you could feel intoxicated from memory alone, but she was, and she didn’t know if she would feel better in the morning. 

**2010.**

“Can we be honest to each other for once? Truly honest.” He shook his head. “No more of that ‘you mean too much to me’ and ‘running away from our problems’ bullshit.”

“Okay, yeah.” Arya waved her hand to move him along. “Give it your best.”

“I think you think too much of me,” Gendry said.

Arya stared at him for a moment and then laughed. Her laugh came out sharp and jagged, a high-pitched howl of pure carnality. A wild wolf.

Gendry raised his eyebrows in surprise, startled by her sudden outburst.

She smiled at him viciously. “You don’t get to say that, don’t you dare.”

“This is exactly what I mean.” He realized years ago there was no winning with Arya. There were only stalemates and a never-ending waiting game.

Arya shook her head. “Remember that time sophomore year when you bought me a teddy bear after I spent two periods crying in an empty physics because of something stupid I did with Ned Dayne?”

“He was an asshole. I also remember the two weeks of detention I got for punching him in the face.” Gendry rubbed his knuckles unconsciously.

“There it is,” she said plainly. “Don’t pretend your inferiority complex doesn’t amount to the number of gift-shop stuffed animals I own because you felt that I had been wronged and it was up to you to make it up to me.”

“What do you want me to say?” asked Gendry.

Arya closed her eyes and opened them slowly. “You’re so worried about not being good enough that you don’t realize how toxic it is. You don’t need to play the hero so you can finally feel good about yourself or where you came from.”

He made an aggravated noise. “Since when do you keep count each time I pull you out of your own mess?”

“Messes come naturally to me. Keep up.”

**2014.**

Gendry was terrified, terrifying even. He felt it in himself when he was a kid, reckless with his heart and good intentions. Now, he was a strongly built man with boyish charms. An intimidating stature and hard stare that belied the deep affection buried in his chest. A dangerous combination.

At some point or another, Gendry considered applying for trade school after graduation and maybe starting a nonprofit and finding justice wherever it was left in the world. All his life, he hated power. He thought about Machiavelli and the cocktail of fear and love that brought people to their knees—just a taste of it.

Arya once paid $12 to have his future divined by the old lady who lived in the small apartment above the local ice cream shop. “Two for one deal that came with the flavor of the month,” she said lazily. “I got one too, here give me your palm.”

He shook his head and clutched his hands into fists at his side. She rolled her eyes and pried his right hand open as her sharp fingernails scratched every surface of skin they could find. The back of his hand was clawed in violent red, but the palm of his hand was the supposed crystal ball of his intrepid future.

Her fingertips slid across his palm and delicately followed creases back and forth in a slow rhythm. He felt his heart stop as her soft hands gently glided across his calloused palms. 

“Life, money, love. It’s all in here,” she murmured.

“What’s the verdict?” he asked to humor her. “Am I living to the ripe old age of ninety?”

“You marry young, but fight bitterly and eventually end divorce; that’s why your marriage line splits off like that. Your wife is probably some Northern debutante who comes from old money because your money line goes deep. She gives you a son and notice how your heart line curves up the same way your life line goes down. You suffer a heart attack at your son’s third birthday party, but it’s okay because you were a shit father anyway.” Arya looked up at him with her wide grey pupils and smiled softly, almost imperceptible. She shrugged her shoulders at prophecy.

“What the fuck, Arya?” Gendry was completely taken aback.

She abruptly dropped his hand. “Can’t fight fate.”

  


  


**2006.**

“Let’s go,” he said. Gendry leaned back against the hood of his car and raised a fistful of fries to his mouth. He looked at Arya expectantly.

Her eyes wandered as she sipped the remains of her chocolate shake, bouncing from his messy dark hair to the broken side mirror to the looming neon red diner sign that hung above them from the heavens. The old gods were watching over them, she could feel it.

The parking lot was nearly deserted and the noisy sound of her plastic straw scraping against the bottom of the cup reverberated in the August heat.

“Let’s get out of here,” Gendry repeated, as if she hadn’t heard him the first time.

This time, Arya met his eyes. “What?” It sounded more like _finally_.

“I’ll grab a quarter. Whatever sigil or castle is on the back will tell us where we’re going. And then we’ll go,” replied Gendry. Gendry reached for his pockets to rummage for change. Arya noticed the car keys that dangled off his belt loop.

It was so easy. Get in a car and go.

She reached out to grab his arm, hesitating. “Whatever you pick, there’s no going back.”

He pulled his hand out of his pocket and revealed a quarter.

“Ready?” he asked. With him, she always was. They were Arya and Gendry, a combination of restless energy and youthful hope; they could do anything as long as they were together.

Arya nodded. Gendry flicked his thumb up and they watched the quarter soar into the night sky. It somersaulted as it spun pure probability into a declaration of fate. Gendry easily caught the coin in his palm and quickly closed his fingers around it. Arya held her breath.

High above them, the diner sign blinked from neon red to bright green, a signal it would be open through the night.

Gendry opened his fist.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on [tumblr](https://penchanteds.tumblr.com) where we can agonize about how these two keep getting separated


End file.
